


In the Blood

by Margot_le_Faye



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-20 04:05:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 20,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17015373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margot_le_Faye/pseuds/Margot_le_Faye
Summary: Angsty fluffy fun when Angelus turns Buffy and gets results no one expected. The archive warnings didn't seem to quite fit the fic, because while it starts dark, it does go ridiculously fluffy. There's a touch of BDSM, but that's not the focus of the fic.





	1. An Exemplification of Murphy's Law

**Author's Note:**

> Note when originally posted: What can I say? I was in a mood.
> 
> Updated note: When I first started writing fanfic for BtVS in the 1990's, a friend housed my fic on her site. Eventually, the company she was using got out of the hosting business and the site went away. Fortunately, I saved all the stories as they appeared on the site before it went down. Unfortunately, they are in an old, no longer supported, wordprocessing format that is a PIA for me to work with. At any rate, I am starting the arduous task of reposting everything with this fic, written during the final season of BtVS, fourth season of A:tS. And for fans of my Dramione stuff: don't worry, I'm still working on those updates.

Third time was the charm, after all. In her demon lover’s embrace, recovering from another orgasm and dying for what she knew would be the final as well as the third time, Buffy Summers supposed she should have listened to the vision of her mother. Maybe if she had gotten some sleep, she’d have been better prepared to face him. But no: though she had finally thwarted the First Evil, and put paid to the Beast’s little end of the world scenario, Angelus was the one enemy she had always known she’d be unable to defeat. And maybe, just maybe, if she were very lucky, she would find when her soul left her body that this time heaven would hold _him_ , as well; this time it would truly be heaven for her.

  
A purring growl above her as Angelus continued to drink down her life recalled her to the present, that and the fifth orgasm he forced her to. It surprised her. She thought she couldn’t manage another climax. She’d lost too much blood, was too enervated by the days of imprisonment and forced lovemaking--she couldn’t even call it rape, when the only thing she’d wanted for five bitterly long years was to have him inside her once more. But, he was an expert at this sort of thing, after all. He’d promised her that the last thing she’d feel in this life would be his cold seed shooting into her while she came on his cock and his name spilled from her lips. Actually, it had been more a threat than a promise, and he’d been enraged when he said it.

  
She had been crying, her wrists and ankles chaffed from where she’d tried to pull free of the ensorceled manacles he’d snapped onto her limbs while he had her unconscious. They were vicious things, for all they were crafted of delicate, woven white gold and looked more like expensive jewelry than the most diabolical of restraint devices. Nothing but the best for his precious Slayer, he taunted as he hooked the manacles to chains, binding her, spreadeagled, to the massive bed. How the hell he’d gotten a bed this luxurious and massive up the rickety stairs of the dank and crumbling mansion in the deserted town a few miles past the California border into Mexico, she couldn’t imagine. But the bed wasn’t why she was crying. She wasn’t even crying because the spells on the manacles kept her from breaking free. No, her tears had to do with his other promises, with his taunting. He took real delight in telling her that even though he had every intention of keeping his word, it wouldn’t matter. He wouldn’t have to kill Dawn, or Willow, or Xander or any of her other surviving friends, he explained. Once she rose, she would happily do it herself. Once she rose, he promised her, the world would burn, and she would dance joyously in the flames.

  
"It’s in the blood, babe," he said as he used a sharp knife to cut away the clothing he said she wouldn’t need any more. "Or, more exactly, it’s in my blood, which will soon be your blood."

  
But first, he growled, there was the little matter of her infidelity with Spike. . .

  
That was when Buffy had really lost it. She hurled his own infidelity with Cordelia in his face, perhaps not the smartest move while bound, nude, and helpless in the bed of the most feared vampire on the face of the planet.

  
Angelus did not take her show of temper well.

  
He unbuckled the belt of his leather pants and used it, as he put it, to instill in her the proper respect for her soon-to-be-sire. _He_ was the dom, he growled between delicate blows to her thighs and belly, blows that had her shrieking and lifting from the bed in sheer agony. He got to fuck who he wanted when he wanted. She, however, was his and his alone. He punctuated the lecture with one skilled strike to her breasts that caught both nipples beneath the leather, causing such exquisite agony she’d fainted.

  
Seemingly, that had been the right thing to do. She came back to consciousness to find his head buried between her forcibly spread thighs, his tongue skillfully laving her tender clit. Her gasp of shock betrayed her wakefulness, and he stopped what he was doing to smirk up at her, and climb up her restrained and helpless body.

  
She closed her eyes and turned her head away, unwilling to look at the naked male triumph in his eyes, but he was never that easy. He simply grabbed her chin and forced her head back around, then whispered into her ear soft threats of the things he would do to her if she didn’t open her eyes to look at him.

Reluctantly, she did as he demanded, and it was every bit as bad as she’d thought it would be.

  
The monster wearing her lover’s face looked down at her with her lover’s soulful brown eyes, eyes from which the soul had fled and which held no warmth, no love, but only heated desire and obsession to the point of madness.

  
Then he pushed his rock hard shaft into her slick, wet core and that was infinitely worse. Too long deprived of him, her body finally receiving the fulfillment it had known only once before and had craved every day since, Buffy exploded into a delirious, mind-numbingly intense orgasm as soon as he was fully inside her.

  
The fun kept on coming as Angelus refused to move until she begged him, because he had her begging in minutes. He used all his skill to make her forget the minor injuries that were already healing, as he reduced her to a pleading, pliant, submissive wreck. Then he made her tell him the things that she wanted him to do, the things she’d wanted from Angel for years and had never been allowed to have. He forced past her lips the dirty secrets, the dark desires, every heated fantasy that had tormented her since the night of her seventeenth birthday.

  
And then he did them to her.

  
Of course, by the time he was through, she’d come so much and so hard, she’d finally lost consciousness again, but that seemed to make him even happier.

  
The next time she woke up, she was in a warm bubble bath, whose hot water was owed to a series of kettles and the one working fireplace in the building. Buffy found herself propped against the cool chest of her tormentor, who was seated behind her in the tub, his soapy hands gently smoothing over her skin as he caressed her curves and soothed away the bruises he himself had inflicted.

  
It would have been a golden opportunity to get away, if she weren’t still burdened with those damned enchanted manacles.

  
"Why are you doing this?" she asked, as his hands drifted across her breasts, gently fondling her nipples.

  
"Because you belong to me," he said, nuzzling her neck and scrapping his fangs delicately along her jugular.

  
She shivered, dismayed to find that she’d instinctively pushed her neck back against his fangs, rather than pulled away. His appreciative growl told her that her action had not been lost on him. That, and the way his erection, already hard against her backside, jumped in excitement.

  
"That isn’t what I meant," she moaned, unable to keep herself from wriggling back against him. Suddenly his hands were at her hips, lifting her and a moment later she was brought down firmly on his manhood. Sobbing, she slid all the way down, engulfing him completely as his fangs sank gently home and his fingers tightened on her nipples.

  
She came on his fangs and his cock, expecting that this was it, the moment he would turn her, but it wasn’t. He didn’t take more than a mouthful of her blood, and then he settled for licking at the wounds while his hand drifted from her breasts to her nest of curls. He toyed with her clit, as he pumped into her at a slow, almost leisurely pace, making her climax a few more times before he joined her.

  
She’d been too boneless by then to stand up by herself. He finished bathing her and washed her hair, then lifted her from the tub to wrap her in some fluffy towels and carry her back to the bedroom. This time, when he fastened the chains to her manacles, she was prone rather than supine, though still spreadeagled.

  
"I meant," she said drowsily, trying to pick up the sense of their former conversation as the first drops of warm oil slid onto her shoulders, "why are you doing it this way?" She moaned anew as his large hands worked the oil into her flesh in a soothing massage along her shoulders and arms. "Why haven’t you turned me already?"

  
"Someone getting impatient?" he mocked. She snorted derisively. He chuckled at that, but decided to answer her. "I told you, Buff: you belong to me." He finished with her arms and spread the lovely warm oil down her back. "When I turn you, you’re going to spend eternity by my side, ruling the night as my queen, my consort, my precious fuck-toy." Reaching the end of her back, he squeezed the globes of her pert ass as he said the last, eliciting another moan. He chuckled again, pouring more warm oil onto the smooth skin, and sliding his hands over the delectable mounds.

  
"Doesn’t explain . . ." she began but trailed off as he moved his massage down to the backs of her thighs. But, he knew what she was asking.

  
"Once you’re turned, Buff, what you are is cast in stone. You stop aging, stop growing, stop changing. Well, okay, the hair and nails still grow, and you’ll still shed skin cells, which will still be renewed. What you won’t do is gain much weight. And, you’ll only lose it if you are blood-starved."

  
"You want me to be older before you turn me?" she asked, confused.

  
"No, babe. Your age is perfect for me, just a few years younger than I was myself, when I was turned. But, lover," he said as he continued his massage past her thighs, over the sensitive backs of her knees, her shapely calves and down to her dainty feet, "you haven’t been taking care of yourself. Too busy saving the screwed-up world, your clueless friends and your whining brat of a sister, I guess. You’re thinner than I like, and I don’t appreciate the way your hair has lost its luster, or the circles under your eyes. So, for the next few days, you are going to rest, and eat, in between being fucked into the mattress. When you’re properly recovered, then I’ll turn you." Finished with her feet, Angelus joined her on the bed, spreading himself over her like a particularly large, virile blanket.

  
"And by the time I turn you," he whispered into her ear, rubbing his erection against the oiled cheeks of her ass "you’ll know a thousand ways to please me even more than you do right now."

  
Then he lifted her hips, shoved a pillow beneath them and slid into her womanly core. If he didn’t fuck her into the mattress, he did make her climax so many times she lost count before he finally let go, and came himself. He did not roll off her and go to sleep, however, and when she drifted, at last, into an exhausted slumber, she was still pressed to the bed beneath him.

  
It went like that for the remainder of her captivity.

  
He let her sleep a long time that first night. When she woke up, Angelus had once more buried himself inside her. This time, deeming her at least partly recovered, he did fuck her into the mattress. When she was properly boneless again, he let her sleep some more. The next time she woke up, it was to find a tray of fresh fruit and cheeses awaiting her, along with a bottle of her preferred brand of spring water and a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice. She raised her brow at that last, but Angelus merely shrugged.

  
"The stuff in a carton is perishable, and if you hadn’t noticed, there’s no electricity here."

  
"But you’ve already got the water," she pointed out.

  
"Pay attention, lover: I told you I wanted you at your best when I turn you. Now, if I were the type to deny myself, that would mean I wouldn’t drink from you until the last. But, you are much too delectable, and self-abnegation isn’t really my style. So, I’m going to be drinking from you, just a taste, over the next few days and that means you’ll be needing the juice to keep up your strength."

  
She supposed she could argue, but she didn’t see the point.

  
Something had clearly gone very wrong with their plans. Willow’s location spell had not led her friends to them after Angelus had released Dawn upon Buffy’s surrender. Neither had the tracking device Wes had carefully hidden in the hem of her jacket. The surveillance equipment Lorne had unearthed from when Wolfram & Hart had bugged the Hyperion, and which Fred had sworn was in perfect order, had proved equally useless. It looked like Cordy’s visions really had ended when she’d gone off to whatever _"higher plane"_ she’d spent the summer in, and if Connor’s preternatural tracking abilities had made him the Destroyer in another dimension, they hadn’t been sufficient for him to keep that title in this one. Nor had Spike’s remaining connections to the underworld, or Gunn’s to the street, been sufficient to get them the leads they needed to find where Angelus had concealed himself. Faith, Connor, Xander, Spike and Gunn had not broken into Angelus’ hidden lair with the tranquilizer guns that would have incapacitated the vampire until they could chain him up and Giles could use the Orb of Thesullah Anya had located to recurse Angelus with his soul.

  
In short, Plan A had blown up, Plan B had failed, and Plans C through Z inclusive were in complete shambles: the cavalry was not going to come to Buffy’s rescue, this time.

  
And since the original plan, for which Plans A through Z had only been the back up, had called for Buffy to rescue herself, things really did not look very good for our heroine.

  
She hadn’t walked in unprepared. Tired, yes: she hadn’t slept since she’d begun her battle with the First Evil, a battle she’d had to leave half finished because the Apocalypse in L.A. was even more out-of-control than the Apocalypse in Sunnydale, as she’d found when she’d gotten the frantic call from Cordy about the release of Angelus and the rampage of the Beast. So, the whole gang had come with her to L.A. where she and Faith had managed to banish the Beast back to his own dimension. No time for sleep then, and even if there had been, she thought that Connor’s casual revelation of his paternity would have kept her awake for a day or two all on its own. With his next statement, he’d ensured she wouldn’t get any sleep for a month, as he just as casually informed her that the demon had used Angel’s love for the woman bearing Connor’s child to relieve Angel of his soul.

  
The ensuing ugly, but thankfully private, scene between herself and Cordelia was also not of the sleep-inducing variety. Buffy had hurled her rage at the other girl. How could Cordy, the very person who had taunted Buffy with the fact that she had no right to endanger the world by _"sucking face with your demon lover"_ risk endangering the world in the very same way? Cordy had said something entirely unconvincing about how she and Angel had a more mature relationship, and didn’t need to worry about him losing control like that. Buffy had acidly retorted that she guessed that meant that Cordy knew damned well she could never give Angel the perfect moment of happiness that Angel was still afraid that Buffy could make him feel. . .or had been afraid of as long as he remained Angel. Cordy hadn’t taken that barb too well, but Wes, hearing the sound of their raised voices, had intervened with a rare show of tact before they’d reached the hair-pulling, bitch-slapping stage.

  
Not even able to contemplate sleep after that, Buffy had thrown herself into the effort to track down Angelus. However, they hadn’t gotten very far in their endeavors before the urgency of the FE’s attacks in Sunnydale forced them to abandon the chase, for the moment, and the AI team had joined forces with the Scoobies to avert the other Apocalypse. No sleep, then, of course, either. Finally, they’d vanquished the FE, and were planning to return to LA and their pursuit of Angelus, when Dawn disappeared. They hadn’t even realized she was gone until they got the note. Buffy had recognized the handwriting. Even before Giles had read the contents of the note aloud, Buffy had gone running to Dawn’s room, screaming her sister’s name, knowing too well how the mind of her lover’s twisted alter ego worked.

  
The ultimatum had been direct and to the point: Dawn’s life for Buffy’s surrender. No tricks, no double-crosses, and above all, no interference from the Scoobies or the AI team. The Scoobies, for their part, hadn’t even bothered to protest. Having lived through what Buffy had been willing to do for Dawn in the battle against Glory, they didn’t have a hope that mere appeals to logic or common sense would do a damned bit of good, now. Wes, backed by the AI team--or, all of the AI team with the exception of Cordy, who stood with her arms crossed protectively over her belly, scowling--made an effort, which was politely rebuffed. Buffy had briskly outlined her intent, then had set plans A through Z in motion, just in case she couldn’t fight her way free, this time.

  
So, she had been prepared. Not willing to trust Angelus as far as Xander could throw him, she had armed herself with as many stakes as she could conceal, along with the ingredients for a simple sleep spell she and Willow hoped would knock Angelus out before she had to use more drastic measures.

  
She’d kept her part of the bargain, meeting him in the middle of a very public shopping center with only Xander to accompany her. A tall, dark-haired man approached them from the shadows, a trembling teenage girl held close to his side. Buffy was completely focused on Dawn, reassuring herself that her sister was unharmed--and that she was still breathing. So intense was her concentration, she didn’t immediately realize that something was off, until she felt, coming from behind her, the tingling awareness that _should_ have been coming toward her from the man with Dawn. Even as she began to turn towards that tell-tale sensation, Dawn was pushed into Xander’s waiting arms by the minion dressed to look like Angelus, and the back door of the car that had pulled up behind her opened. Buffy was snatched up almost before she realized what was going on. She hadn’t been able to get to her stakes, or recite the spell, before the chloroform soaked handkerchief was pressed over her nose and mouth, rendering her unconscious.

  
Then she’d woken up, over the border into another country, bound and under magical restraint, her stakes and the spell ingredients burning merrily in the hearth before her, and that had been pretty much that. If Angelus had relied upon plain steel and brute force to subdue her, she’d have broken out of her captivity within moments, shattering the heavy oak of the bed, if need be. She would have used her chains as a weapon, and beaten him to a bloody pulp with them, before binding him and dragging him back to Sunnydale where there was an Orb of Thesullah with his name on it.  
She was the Slayer, and giving up wasn’t in her nature.

  
But, she was a warrior, not a witch. Angelus knew her too well to rely on strength alone to keep her subdued. The magic restraints left her unable to fight him back, unable to use her Slayer strength or her native cleverness against him. In very short order, Buffy realized that her last, desperate hope of escape lay with her friends.

  
Even that faint hope was gone by the end of the day.

  
Either Angelus had gotten them out of range of the various spells and devices her friends had been counting on to lead them to her, or he’d used stronger magic to counter theirs. Knowing Angelus, it was probably a combination of both.

  
Oddly, when her last hope died, Buffy came to a kind of peace with herself. Angelus had made his intentions clear: her life was going to end in a very few days. The idea didn’t horrify her as it might once have done. For one thing, her affairs were pretty much settled. Once she’d gotten a grip after returning from the dead the last time, she’d taken the necessary legal steps to secure Dawn’s future, should anything happen to her--again--before her younger sister reached the age of eighteen. Giles was back, and the papers were in order for him to assume legal guardianship of Dawn. It was doubtful Hank Summers would fight the matter in court. At sixteen, Dawn was legally entitled to be given a say in her own custody, and it was more than likely that she’d reach the age of eighteen and the end of a legal need for guardianship well before the case could finish wending its way through the court system. Financial matters had also been addressed. Because of her youth and good health, Buffy had been able to take out a reasonably large insurance policy on her own life for a nominal sum. It wouldn’t make Dawn rich, but it would pay the bills and keep a roof over her head for the next few years, with enough left over to pay her way through Sunnydale U.

  
Buffy’s affairs as a Slayer were also in order. Her defeat of the First Evil and the Beast, would, Giles was certain, assure that lesser threats would not have the strength to attack for a long time. Faith would be left with the duty of guarding the Hellmouth, and protecting the Slayers In Training until it was their time to be called. With luck, and help from the Scoobies, Faith would last longer than Buffy had: long enough for the next generation of SITs to be born and for the line to be strengthened, once more. She would also have to trust that Faith, the AI team and the Scoobies would be able to keep a turned Buffy and Angelus from killing everyone the living Buffy loved.

  
She comforted herself with the fact that it was by no means certain that, once she was turned, she would want to bother going back to Sunnydale just to kill her family. Angelus had likely said what he had on the subject more to torment her than for any other reason. He had never referred to the matter again, and was instead talking enthusiastically of the easy pickings to be found in South America. He was also making plans to take Buffy to Europe, for the purpose of showing her off before the powerful and ancient orders of vampires whose leaders had never ventured to the New World. No one had ever turned a Slayer before, Angelus bragged, and she would be the crowning glory of his long and bloody career. In the face of those delights, slaughtering Buffy’s friends and family was probably low on the agenda.

  
Of course, they would be slaughtering someone’s friends and family, and the idea that she was going to become the very thing she hated was not a pleasant one.

  
But, it wouldn’t really be her, after all. She could still remember Angel’s words from so long ago: _"The demon gets your body, but it doesn’t get your soul. That’s just gone."_   Except, as she knew now, the soul wasn’t really gone. It went somewhere, resting in the ether. In a few days, Buffy’s soul would be free to return to the heaven she had been ruthlessly pulled from, and since Angelus was back, Angel’s soul was likewise at liberty.

  
There was one thing in her life that Buffy knew with unquestioning and unshakeable conviction: if both her soul and Angel’s were free and unbound, they would find each other, no matter the demons, the dimensions, the length of hell or the breadth of heaven that tried to keep them apart.

  
If she needed proof of that, wasn’t her very position as Angelus’ prisoner all she required? Angel’s love for her was so thoroughly ingrained into every fiber of his being, that even his demon was obsessed by it.

  
She supposed she should feel regret and horror for what her body, and her well-trained Slayer’s mind, were going to do once she was turned, but she couldn’t work herself up into the proper degree of angst over the situation. She had died in the line of duty, saving the world, twice. She’d been resurrected, saving the world a few more times, after that. It wasn’t her fault Angelus had been unleashed this time, and it wasn’t her fault that her careful plans to get the upper hand over him hadn’t worked out. She knew from her long-ago conversation with Whistler that The Powers That Be had intervened in her own life, and in Angel’s, when she was first called. She gathered from things Cordy and Wes had let slip over the years, that those Powers had continued to intervene on Angel’s behalf, afterward. If They were not going to get up off Their immortal asses to intervene this time, then They would have to deal with the consequences. As for Buffy, she intended for her non-corporeal self to be safely snuggled in Angel’s non-corporeal arms for the next few millennia.

  
But, before she got there, she would have to deal with being unsafely caught in Angelus’ all too corporeal arms. And, she had spent entirely too long thinking about why it wasn’t worth it to argue with him over the orange juice. He was beginning to look impatient. Sighing, Buffy reached out for the glass and dutifully drank it down.


	2. The Best Laid Plans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Buffy's captivity.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I went to post the second chapter, I realized that when I copied the text from the original site, I only copied the second chapter's title, not the titles of the individual chapters...whatever those titles were. So, I have decided upon new ones. The title originally posted with the first chapter properly belongs to chapter two. That issue has now been corrected.

The next few days fell into a predictable routine. While Buffy slept, Angelus went off to parts unknown to procure food for her. There was a cooler and ice to keep a few things cold, and the fire to heat up things that needed heating. The plumbing wasn’t in the best shape, but the toilet was usable, and someone--either a minion or a human who might or might not have survived the employment--had recently cleaned the facilities as best they could be cleaned. There was no running water, but large pitchers stood ready whenever she wanted to wash her face or hands, or brush her teeth, most likely having been drawn from a well somewhere on the property. And, there was the nightly ritual of the heated bath.

But, the heated bath only followed after she had gotten heated up in other ways.

The restraints with which he’d bound her worked on more than a physical level, she quickly discovered. They not only made it impossible for her to attack him physically, they actually drained her of any desire she had to escape him, at all. She suspected that if her friends ever did manage to track them down, and burst in to rescue them, she wouldn’t lift a finger to help them, no matter how badly she wanted to be free. Worse still, the restraints made her incapable of defending herself from the little lessons Angelus so loved to teach.

He was still pissed about Spike. For that matter, he was even pissed about Riley and Parker. As Buffy was dragged across Angelus’ lap, she bitterly pointed out the unfairness of his accusations about the human males, considering that he himself had left her for the stated purpose of giving her the chance to find a human male to partner her. Despite his angry denials that it had been soul-boy, not Angelus himself behind that not-so-bright idea, Angelus clearly did not take too well to the reminder. He used the buckle of his belt for the first few blows to her ass. Drawing blood, and feeling Buffy’s tears falling on his thighs, appeased him enough that he abandoned the belt in favor of his own broad hand. Still, by the time he was done, Buffy’s rear end and upper thighs were bright red and swollen. Pleased with the artistic composition he’d made of Buffy’s tender flesh, Angelus picked her up, carried her to the middle of the bedroom, and hooked her manacles to a chain suspended from the ceiling, there. She was left standing on her tip toes while he walked around her, admiring her freely-falling tears and her lusciously reddened ass. He ultimately knelt behind her and proceeded to lave the hurts with his cool tongue. Buffy kept crying, more in humiliation than for any other reason, especially when his tongue snaked between her burning hot cheeks and assaulted her puckered back passage.

That was territory even Spike hadn’t ventured toward; territory Riley hadn’t even contemplated.

Angelus hadn’t just contemplated it: he had made elaborate plans. He told her some of them when he finally stopped rimming her and stood back up, walking around to face her once more. She wasn’t ready yet, he explained as he unzipped his pants just enough to free his swollen, rigid manhood. He had so much more to teach her, he said while she whimpered in pain from the feel of his hands on her bruised and aching flesh as he lifted her off the floor. Soon, he promised, pulling her onto his erection, and bending his head to capture a tender nipple in his mouth. Then he drove her to a number of earth-shattering climaxes before, taking pity on her strained arms, he released her chains. He carried her back to the bed, where he’d spent the rest of the night teaching her that the pain he’d inflicted on her only heightened the pleasure he could make her feel.

The next day, he tutored her in oral gratification. Neither Riley nor Spike had been exactly small, but they couldn’t compare to Angelus. It was difficult for her to take much of him in and still breathe. Angelus was uncharacteristically patient with her, assuring her that it would be easier in a few days, when breathing would cease to be an issue for her. Buffy considered biting down when he said that, but either because of the manacles, or because she had a feeling that Angelus would make her regret it in ways she couldn’t begin to imagine, she refrained. Her restraint was rewarded. After his own orgasm, he spent hours suckling her breasts into a state of sensitivity she had never known they were capable of achieving, culminating in a series of intense orgasms for her. They finished the night with a marathon session of _soixsant neuf_ ; after which Angelus proceeded to pound her into the mattress, again. As before, she was under him when she fell asleep, and he was still inside her.

He was still inside her when she woke up the next morning, and he made her come six times before he decided she needed breakfast. She fell asleep after breakfast, worn out from carnal excess. She woke up several hours later to the pleasant sensation of warm oil being massaged into her back and shoulders. She was chained prone on the bed. What he was doing felt too good for her to protest, at least not until, having massaged her from her neck to toes, he worked his way back up her body, and poured warm oil into the crack of her ass. She did protest then, but only halfheartedly. Several days of enduring multiple orgasms for hours on end at the hands, lips, tongue, teeth and cock of your demon lover could have that effect on a girl, she realized. Angelus ignored her protests, anyway, slid a few pillows under her hips to raise her to the right angle, and settled down to amuse himself.

He rimmed her again, his tongue playing with the puckered rosette opening of her back passage until she was sobbing in combined humiliation and need. When he felt he’d teased her enough, he used more oil, massaging it into her sphincter, then forcing his oiled finger inside. He could tell by the way she whimpered and resisted that this was entirely new to her. The knowledge that he was going to be first, here, despite the other lovers she’d taken, went a long way toward mollifying him. He worked the finger in and out of her slowly, waiting until she grew used to the unaccustomed sensation before adding a second well-oiled finger. She tensed again, but he had waited a long time for this, and wasn’t about to rush things. Patiently, he waited again, his movements inside her slow and gentle. Once more she relaxed and once more he added another oiled digit. The fourth one was almost too much for her, and she begged him to stop. But he knew that his own girth was going to be even harder for her to take if she weren’t properly prepared, so he simply ignored her pleading until she abandoned her protests and let him do as he wished. A while later, she began to thrust back ever so tentatively, against his invasion. Smiling, he withdrew his fingers, raised her hips to a slightly more convenient angle, and knelt behind her.

Despite how well he’d lubed her, it was a tight fit. She gave the most delicious pained little sobs as he forced himself past the tight ring of muscles. She was crying openly by the time he was fully seated and screamed outright when he began to move. Her pain excited him, and it was with effort that he restrained himself from tearing into her. That would come soon enough, when her vampiric nature welcomed such things. If he damaged her now, he’d have to wait even longer than he’d planned before he could turn her, and that just wasn’t an acceptable option. Angelus gentled his movements, whispered soothing nonsense in her ear, and slid his hand around her to play in her nest of curls. The screams quieted, the tears lessened. She was still whimpering and he knew he was still hurting her, but he also knew that she was receiving pleasure as well. His patience was stretched to the limits, but ultimately, it was rewarded. After what seemed an eternity of holding himself to slow, shallow thrusts while he slid his fingers through her damp curls, he felt her thrust ever so slightly back against him. Smiling, he increased his pressure, and ran his tongue around the sensitive shell of her ear. Not long after, she was moaning and thrusting back against him in earnest, and he was able to move with the force he desired, if not yet with complete abandon. Soon, though, she was meeting him fully, panting as her excitement grew and he let himself go utterly, pounding into her and twisting her clit until she came, screaming, her wonderfully tight ass clamping his dick in a death grip until he spewed his load deep into her gut. Buffy collapsed onto the pillows, and Angelus collapsed on top of Buffy, deliciously sated, and unable to gather the energy to pull out of her until long moments later.

The next day’s lessons had been about denial. Angelus spent hours making tender, even delicate love to her. But he did not let her reach completion. By the time he was through with her, she had willingly placed a pair of painful nipple clamps on her own breasts and lain without protest as he lightly rained blows on her thighs and buttocks with a small braided whip. She had ultimately let him do whatever he wanted to do if only he would bring her the release she craved. Which, finally, to their mutual pleasure, he did; for several delightful, abandoned hours.

That had been yesterday. Today, he had avoided her bed, and she thought that had been another lesson. She had expected that if he ever left her to herself, she would need to sleep the day away just to recover from all of the sexual activity she’d had. Instead, the opposite proved true. Once she woke up and had breakfast, she discovered that her body was in a continual state of expectant arousal. She wanted, even needed, Angelus to come back to her.

For once, he didn’t seem so inclined.

Eventually, she fell asleep in frustration, just before dusk. When she woke up an hour later, he was back. And, he’d brought her a gift.

Vampires weren’t much for mirrors, and she couldn’t imagine where he’d found this one, or how he’d gotten it into their room. It was an old fashioned, massive, full-length glass, framed in solid oak, like the bed, on a stand that was hinged so that the mirror could be tilted to different angles. He’d set it up not far from the fireplace, in which he’d kindled a good-sized blaze. On the floor in front of the mirror was a length of thick fur, large enough to have been a rug, deep and plush enough to have been a coat. Angelus was standing on the rug, before the mirror, commandingly beautiful in his nakedness, brooding into his lack of reflection. But, if his own reflection was missing from the mirror, hers was not. Angelus saw that she was awake. Smirking, he turned to her, holding out his hand.

Buffy realized then that he had removed the chains from her manacles. She also realized what he wanted. Pushing aside the covers she got out of bed, approaching him warily, but not daring to refuse the offered hand.

"You’ll enter eternity, soon," he said, leading her forward to face the mirror. "And eternity has its price." He moved behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her back against his broad chest. Instinctively, she rested her arms on his. But none of that was visible in the mirror: it looked as if her arms, with their delicate gold ornaments, were simply folded in mid-air, a few inches away from her ribs.

"And that, my love, is part of the price. You will leave your mark upon the world, but the natural world will strive to deny you. Your image will never again be reflected back to you by mirror, or water, or even a darkened pane of glass. Most of those who are in the world will never notice, but you will know. And you will wonder. What do you look like, now that centuries have passed? Is the image you recall from life unchanged, or has time dulled the memory?

"So, remember this, my love. Remember how beautiful you are. Look at your hair, how lustrous it is, golden and shining; silken sunlight." He ran his hands through it, and Buffy watched in the mirror as the strands separated and poured through her demon lover’s invisible fingers. "And your skin," he went on, moving to caress her shoulders and arms. "Tanned and sun-kissed as well. See how green your eyes, how full and red your lips," he added, his fingers now lightly tracing over those features, as well. "How utterly perfect your form". A light kiss was pressed to the back of her neck. "You’re a truly magnificent creature, Buffy, and you will make an unparalleled vampire; a concubine of blood, the only mate fit for me."

His touch was arousing her further than the unwonted deprivation had done. She could smell the sharp tang of her own arousal perfuming the air, knew by his low chuckle that he smelled it as well, and that he was pleased. Trembling, Buffy closed her eyes, and leaned back into him. He permitted this for a few more moments, as he pressed cool kisses to her temple, her jaw, the column of her neck, her shoulders.

"Open your eyes," he whispered, finally, as his hands drifted to her hips, and she felt herself being lifted. She obeyed him in time to see herself impaled on the invisible cock of the demon standing behind her. Buffy mewled in relief. She had been burning for him, because only he could sooth her, only his cool flesh could ease the fires in her own.

It was not an easy position, but his grip on her was unfaltering as he pumped slowly into her, whispering immoderate demands into her ear. She was to watch herself being pleasured, to enjoy the delicate rose flush suffusing her skin. Did she see how pretty her pink pussy was, as it parted to accept the invasion of its master? And her lovely breasts, with their hard little rose-brown peaks? He wanted to see her fingers on those sweet bits of flesh. She was to pull them they way he did. Buffy didn’t even consider fighting him, too caught up in the delicious, languorous sensations he created with his skilled caresses and heated words, the masterful and artful play of his body upon hers. Slowly, so slowly he moved inside her, driving her mad with need, so that she was whimpering and pleading mindlessly. He shifted her slightly, continuing to drive into her willing flesh while holding her with one arm, the other hand traveling across her firm belly, into her nest of curls. Buffy’s breath hitched in a soft cry as his strong, clever fingers began to add to her pleasure.

"So beautiful," he murmured into her ear, as he forced her to climb the peak of pleasure. Buffy could not look away from her reflection, her green eyes wide with desire, her pouting lips opened in a cry of need she could not suppress. Her nipples were hard and pointed, visible through her taunting fingers, the gold at her wrists flashing dully in the firelight reflected in the mirror. Her legs, with their own golden bands, were wrapped around those of her invisible lover, and she could indeed see her womanly core, flushed a stunning pink as Angelus continued to slide invisibly in and out of her, his invisible fingers bringing her to the very brink of ecstasy.

For one moment she was suspended on the edge of rapture, fully impaled on her lover’s invisible cock, his fingers ruthless on her clit. One more stroke, and she would surely plunge over. Maddeningly, he chose that moment to go perfectly still.

"You will never be more beautiful than you are right now," he whispered, and she felt his cool lips against her neck. A moment later, he thrust deep inside her once more, and in that moment, suffused with ecstasy, she felt the exquisitely painful pleasure of his fangs sinking deeply into her neck, and her blood being drawn from her veins. Wracked by the most intense orgasm she had ever experienced, her own rapturous, helpless cries sounding in her ears, Buffy watched as her body shattered with pleasure. Unable to look away, she kept watching as she squeezed down on Angelus manhood more tightly than she could ever remember having done, watched as a thin stream of her blood dripped from his invisible fangs down her neck and onto her breasts.

Her climax was gloriously unending, but so too was his drinking from her. Helplessly, she continued to watch herself in the mirror, unsurprised when the tears began to fall. This really was it, after all. Another climax, gentler than the first, and she began to lose strength. Angelus bore her to the floor, and the soft, thick fur he’d placed there, as she now realized, for her comfort. For a moment he withdrew his fangs, and her heart leapt with the absurd hope that she was to be given a reprieve. But no: he merely wanted to shift their positions. He pulled out of her weakened body, laying her tenderly on her back on the rug. Then he came over her again, kissing her with his reddened lips, forcing her to drink her own blood from his tongue. Curiously, the taste did not repel her, but then she was beyond such things now, weak and dying and still in the grip of erotic languor. Angels slid back inside her, and broke their kiss to rain light, butterfly soft kisses over her temple, her hair, her face.

"My Buffy, mine," he whispered to her between heated kisses, and it was a claim she could not dispute.

"Always," she whispered back. She had just enough strength to wrap her arms around his neck and hold him closer.

Another searing kiss, another skilled thrust inside her, another ecstatic peak. He broke the kiss and nuzzled back into her neck, letting his fangs break skin once more. That brought on her fourth orgasm. Her head was turned once more toward the mirror, and she could see herself spread wantonly across the thick fur rug, lost in abandon for what she naively supposed would be the last time in her life. Surely she had lost too much blood, was too depleted by these endless days of lovemaking to endure more?

Buffy continued to gaze at herself in the mirror, and she could see herself dying. She no longer had enough blood left to sustain the rosy flush Angelus had so admired, but she had not run out of tears. It was only then, as she clung to the demon murdering her so sweetly, so softly, so inevitably, that she realized she had held onto a faint hope of rescue until that very moment. Some tiny part of her had wanted to believe that the Powers would intervene, that her friends would break down the door, would overpower him, would keep her from dying yet again, and would restore her lost love to her arms.

But she saw now, with brutal clarity, that it was not to be. She wept, then, for the things that she had wanted but would never have; the children she would not bear to Angel, the years they would not spend growing old together, the weddings she would not see celebrated, the graduations she would not attend.

And even as she wept, she did not struggle against her murderer, but held him closer, pressed herself more tightly to him, offered herself more completely, all the while she wondered if things might have been different if only she’d listened to the vision of her mother, and gotten more sleep. . .

Then had come Angelus purring growl and the lovely warmth of a fifth orgasm. Her mind drifted over the events that had led her to this time and place, then drifted back.

She was getting cold, though not unpleasantly so, and her arms were no longer strong enough to maintain their grip around his neck. They slid away, coming to rest beside her in the soft fur. The image in the mirror began to seem very remote, and indistinct. Buffy was only vaguely aware that Angelus had stopped draining her and was gently turning her face from the mirror back to his own, but he had a promise to keep to her. His fathomless brown eyes gazed deeply into her slowly dimming green ones, and for one sweet sharp moment she was vitally aware of him, of her own life, of everything in the world around her, once more.

It was at that moment that Angelus moved more deeply inside her, hitting the most sensitive nerves her body held, and forced her to the ultimate pinnacle of delight. Her eyes widened, and she chanted his name as she convulsed around him in utter rapture while he let loose his own climax deep inside her fluttering core.

Thus it was that the last thing Buffy Summers felt before she died for the third, and indeed, final time, was Angelus’ cold seed shooting into her while she came on his cock and his name spilled from her lips. The last things she saw before her eyelids fluttered closed were his dark eyes, regarding her with a mixture of triumph and, unbelievably, tenderness.

And the last thing she thought was that, as far as dying went, she vastly preferred the third way to the other two she’d suffered.

Had she been able to hold on to her rapidly ebbing consciousness, she would next have felt the cool slide of his poisonous blood down her throat, but she was already too far gone to notice it. Not so far gone that she did not reflexively swallow all that was offered to her, though.

A moment later, she went utterly still, not in exhaustion, but in the ultimate stillness of death.

Angelus was yet inside her, and he paused to lick the last remaining traces of her delectable blood from her sweet skin. She tasted so fucking good, even in death. Scratch that: _especially_ in death. The past few days had been an erotic marathon that had outdone the best of Darla’s or Dru’s efforts, or even both their efforts, combined. Just thinking about it had him semi-hard once more, and he briefly debated using Buffy’s body to achieve another release. The idea, oddly, did not appeal. Angelus had no objection, in principle, to screwing a corpse, but there was something very unsatisfying about the thought of fucking Buffy when Buffy wasn’t able to fuck him back. Even when she was asleep or unconscious, she was always deliciously, wantonly responsive to him. No, he decided, pulling out of her, he’d save himself. Doubtless he’d need all his strength when she rose, in another night’s time, the first Slayer in the long history of the world to have been successfully turned. Her vampiric appetites were probably going to be every bit as demanding as his own.

Whistling to himself, Angelus tenderly wrapped his dead lover in the fur rug and carried her cooling corpse back to bed.

Angelus spent the next day recruiting his strength. With his lover’s body held tight in his arms, he’d slept until late afternoon, when he had ordered his minions to arrive. They showed up on time with the supplies that he’d wanted, including the bagged blood and the idiot teenager. While Angelus didn’t have time to go on the hunt right now, he didn’t want his darling’s first real meal to be fast food: only the best for his mate, and that meant living prey. Since the town was deserted, living prey was in short supply, hence the need for it to be delivered. The prey was suitably frightened and was babbling on about trust funds and ransom payments, which bored Angelus badly. Fortunately, knocking the boy out cold went far toward alleviating said boredom. Angelus ordered Buffy’s future meal tied up, grabbed the bags of blood, warned his minions what would happen if they tried to snack, and took the other things they’d brought with them back upstairs to the room where Buffy lay.

He drank one of the bags, then set out the clothing he’d procured for her, a deceptively simple skirt and top that gave the appearance of a sophisticated evening dress. Fashioned from green velvet the precise color of her eyes, the top was a boned corset, the hooks of the front closure camouflaged by a row of tiny diamonds. The skirt, of the same green velvet, was a simple straight line, with a demure hemline that would end just high enough above Buffy’s knees to show off her shapely legs, but low enough to conceal the garters that would hold up her black stockings. Angelus didn’t see the point of panties or a slip: the skirt was fully lined, after all. With the high-heeled black leather pumps, silk stockings, and a black beaded evening bag, Buffy would look stunning in her new outfit. And, if he knew anything about the female nature--particularly the avaricious nature of vampire females-- Buffy would be delighted with it, and would demonstrate that delight in ways that Angelus was sure to enjoy very, very much.

Satisfied that everything was ready, Angelus sat down to watch over his lover, and wait for her to rise. It would be hours, yet, of course, so he beguiled the time by drawing her, rendering sketch after sketch of Buffy as she had been in life, and as he knew she would be in unlife.

Because Buffy was never out of his sight for more than a few minutes, the changes that gradually came over her went unnoticed by him. He didn’t realize that her sunlight gold hair had lightened, ever so slowly, until it took on a more moonlit tinge. Her tanned skin, deprived of blood, was already pale, so he did not see that it became paler yet, with the smoothness of alabaster, and a faint shimmer, as of stardust. Her lips had always been a lush pink, and now ripened into a deeper tinge, almost scarlet. Though the longer she lay awaiting moonrise, the more beautiful she looked to him, Angelus’ suspicions were not aroused. He merely thought that he was anticipating her rise, when her nature would finally match his own, and they would be together as all the gods of hell surely meant for them to be.

At length, the long years of waiting, the plans carefully made, paid off. As midnight struck, Buffy sat up with a gasp of unneeded breath. Eyes wide, she looked around, as disoriented as most fledglings when they first woke. Angelus smiled, rising from his chair to go to his mate.


	3. Unintended Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angelus becomes the first vamp to ever turn a Slayer. What could possibly go wrong with that?

Buffy was confused, but only for a moment. Angel was here, was coming toward her. Everything was all right. But, no, not Angel: Angelus. This wasn’t heaven, she realized vaguely, but the twin hungers blossoming inside her belly and her veins caused her to push such irrelevant thoughts aside.

"Angelus?" she whispered, plaintively, holding out her arms, "I need you."

Whatever heated fantasies Angelus had imagined for the moment when Buffy rose as his mate, the reality beggared them all. The most gorgeous creature the world had ever birthed was holding her arms out to him in supplication and he lost no time pulling off his clothes to make his way into those arms. For one moment, he had the oddest fancy that he ought to crawl there on his knees, but heated lust put an end to such madness.

"I’m right here baby," he growled, pulling her into a searing kiss. Too searing, it occurred to him: his lover was hot to the touch, not cold as she should be. The sensation was so delicious, and her actions in pulling him closer and parting her thighs for him were so enticing, he couldn’t worry about little things like body temperature. Maybe she was just warm from the fire he’d kept burning. . .

It didn’t matter. What mattered was that his eternal mate was rubbing her wet core against his manhood, was plundering his mouth with her sweet tongue, was wrapping her strong, silken thighs around his back and digging her nails into his shoulders as she tried to get him to take her nownownownow _NOW!_

He was only too happy to oblige, and lost no time meeting her need, plunging into the most enticing feminine inferno ever to have slaked masculine desire.

Feeling her lover fill her to the limit, Buffy clamped down around him with her inner muscles, the embrace so tight, so wanton, so skilled that Angelus lost control on his first thrust and spilled himself inside her like an untried schoolboy. As soon as he’d done so, he went rigid with shock. That never happened to him, never! Not even when he _was_ an untried schoolboy.

Happily, the beauty writhing beneath him hadn’t noticed his stunning lack of control. Even more happily, whatever she’d done to unman him was now having the opposite effect: Angelus was hard again almost before he’d finished ejaculating his seed. He managed to bring her to her first orgasm a moment later, but any smugness he felt about that accomplishment was quickly stripped away. With a snarl, Buffy used a vampiric strength that was a match for his own to reverse their positions. Sitting astride him, having gained the upper hand for once and determined to keep it, Buffy began to pound him into the mattress as he had often pounded her.

It wasn’t a situation Angelus felt the least desire to complain about.

Over the course of the next two hours, Buffy gave Angelus ample demonstration of the fact that the only creature on the planet with a more voracious sexual appetite than a vampire was a vampire who used to be a Slayer. They’d quickly realized the bed wasn’t an adequate arena for their mating and had moved onto the fur rug that had been replaced on the floor. Angelus wasn’t sure that the rug was going to survive intact, given Buffy’s penchant for shredding it while in the throes of orgasmic delight. As the convulsions of her orgasmic delight almost always catapulted him into orgasmic delights of his own, the rugs survival wasn’t on his priority list. Of course it was a short list, at the moment: the only item on it was taking care of his Slayer.

Two hours later, exhausted and barely able to move, Angelus wasn’t sure who had been taking care of whom. Buffy lay next to him, clearly as drained as he was. Perhaps more so, he frowned. She was beginning to cry, and her body was trembling. Concerned, he dredged up the energy to crawl closer to her.

"Baby?" he asked.

"I don’t understand . . ." she said, but she couldn’t explain to him what she didn’t understand. That wasn’t too surprising, he realized. Newborns were often confused when they rose. And they were always wildly, insatiably hungry. That must be it, he thought. Buffy hadn’t fed. She’d risen a couple of hours ago but still hadn’t eaten anything. With a groan, he realized that her intended meal was just too damned far away. No way did either of them have the energy to climb down the stairs to where the minions and the prey were waiting.

The solution was fairly simple, of course. Not precisely orthodox, and he could be considered spoiling her, but after a ride like that, she deserved all the spoiling he could give.

"It’s okay, baby," he said confidently, pulling her back into his arms. "Daddy’s got what you need." He did what he had rarely done even for Darla, and willingly bared his throat to another of his kind, pressing Buffy’s face into the crook of his neck, knowing that instinct would take over.

What he wasn’t prepared for was the strength of that instinct.

Buffy realized what he was doing, and her first reaction was pure horror. But, the hunger inside her veins had been clamoring for her attention since she’d woken up, and with the even more insistent hunger of her flesh now slaked, the overriding imperative of bloodthirst took over.

Wrapping her arms around him, Buffy pulled Angelus closer, and allowed her fangs to descend, then sank them into the proffered flesh.

She came the instant the richness of sireblood hit her tongue, her orgasm so intense, she was only vaguely aware that he had shouted in shocked pleasure and joined her climax, his seed spilling against her belly.

What the hell? He’d never reacted like that before. Groaning Angelus pulled his lover closer, silently begging her to do it again.

Her hunger stimulated, rather than appeased, by the potent liquor of his blood, Buffy could not help but comply.

The next fifteen minutes passed in an orgasmic haze for both of them, as Buffy slowly drank from her mate. Vaguely, it occurred to Angelus that he ought to be doing the same, that he shouldn’t let her take too much, because he was already exhausted. His mind was too clouded by pleasure to act on his instincts, and he merely held her closer, moaning in delight.

It was Buffy who finally realized the danger, and reluctantly drew away. She curled in on herself, shivering next to him, while Angelus slowly gathered the strength to sit up beside her.

"You’re still hungry," he observed. She looked up at him through tear-filled eyes and nodded her assent. He wasn’t really surprised: sireblood was nourishing to a newborn, but his girl had burned a lot of energy, and probably needed a full meal. Which meant a live human.

However, they both needed the strength to get down there to where the live human waited. Calling for the minions to attend them while his lover sprawled wantonly naked at his side just wasn’t an option. Angelus crawled the few feet to the cooler, flipped open the top, and hauled out two blood bags. He unceremoniously ripped into the first one, drained it in one long gulp, then, considerably revitalized, brought the other pack to Buffy.

"This should help," he told her, handing her the pack. Buffy took it, but only looked at in confusion, turning it over and over in her hands. Sighing, Angelus took it back from her, punctured it with his fangs, then proceeded to kneel beside her, coaxing her to look up at him so that he could pour a few drops into her mouth. With a startled gasp, Buffy pulled away, and Angelus was shocked to see her scrub the blood from her mouth with an expression of disgust on her face.

"That. . . that’s foul" she said. Angelus raised a brow. Sure, bagged blood wasn’t a vampire’s preferred meal, but in her near-starved state, Buffy shouldn’t have had any complaints. Well, he couldn’t really blame her for her discriminating taste. With a shrug, Angelus finished off the bag by himself, then hauled Buffy back into his arms and gently drew her head back to the vein in his own neck. He was full up and could certainly spare another pint or two.

Once again, the lovers were locked into orgasmic bliss while Buffy fed from her sire. As before, she pulled away before she could do any harm, but this time the edge was off her hunger, and her strength was somewhat restored. Angelus was able to lead her into the bathroom, where they managed to clean each other up before returning to the bedroom to get dressed.

She looked every bit as stunning in the clothes he’d chosen for her as he’d hoped. More so. Angelus was so enchanted that he didn’t notice the puzzled look she gave her reflection in the mirror, didn’t notice the mirror at all. He only had eyes for the beauty in front of him. He walked over to her, kissed her deeply, and suggested that they get her something to eat.

"Yes, please," she agreed, putting her hand trustingly in his and letting him lead her down the stairs.

The minions had obviously decided to have a little fun with Buffy’s dinner, because he was untied. But, they were only horsing around and hadn’t done more than go into game face to frighten him. Angelus was far too mellow to be angered by their antics. He merely pulled Buffy forward when they reached the bottom of the stairs and pushed her gently in the direction of her meal.

" _Bon appetite,_ darling," he wished her.

She looked back at him uncertainly, as if unwilling to lose contact with him, then reluctantly moved forward.

Everyone’s reaction to the first sight of the only Slayer to have ever been turned was surprising. Gratifying, but surprising. There was one long moment when they simply stood frozen, staring at her, as she approached. Then, all three men, meal and minions both, fell to their knees. Oddly, it was the minions who were cowering in terror, while the human had a completely idiotic smile on his face, even as he closed his eyes, and bared his neck in unmistakable offering. Angelus watched in disbelief as Buffy bent almost tenderly over the boy. He watched as she inhaled the scent of the boy’s skin and licked delicately over the flesh of his neck. But he heard, very clearly, what she whispered into his ear.

"Run."

The word was a distinct command, and the boy stumbled to his feet, a look of loss on his face as he fled the room. Buffy whirled on the two cowering minions, hauling one into his arms. He, too, bared his neck willingly, with an almost ecstatic sigh. Angelus roared in displeasure. How dare his mate even think of sharing with any other vamp the matchless pleasure of her bite that she should reserve for him alone? Before he could rip the offender from her embrace, however, the minion had been drained dry, exploding into dust and leaving Buffy standing there with reddened lips, eyes burning like green fire, and the gorgeous flush of feeding tinting her alabaster skin the faintest rose. Smiling at Angelus, she reached for the next minion.

Angelus stood rooted in shock as Buffy made quick work of her next meal, and another explosion of dust showered around them.

"What the hell are you doing?" he growled. Buffy’s happy, sated smile faded. She looked confused again.

"I . . was hungry," she explained.

"That’s what humans are for!" he snarled stalking toward her. "We don’t feed on our own kind!"

"But they’re not our kind," Buffy said, seeming more confused than ever. By now Angelus had reached her and was staring down into her luminous green eyes.

And it was then that he saw it, of course, as Darla had seen almost the same thing, over a hundred years before.

"You have a soul!" he howled, enraged. "A filthy, disgusting soul!" As his plans came crashing down in ruins around him, he struck out in blind anger, hitting Buffy across the cheek, and knocking her to the floor. Sobbing, not understanding, Buffy crawled away from him. Angelus’ anger was consuming him, and with a roar he destroyed the first object that came to his hand, a heavy wooden table. While he was smashing it into kindling, Buffy fled, finding her way through the house and out of the door by blind instinct. Blind instinct also told her to ignore the sleek black sports care in the front yard and take the less prestigious sedan. She had forgotten that a key was required to turn on the ignition, which was just as well, since in her new state, she didn’t need a key at all. The car started up the moment she got behind the wheel, and she never noticed the tiny spark that leapt from her hand to the ignition. She simply pulled out of the yard and drove off into the night, not certain where she was headed, but following the path that felt right to her.

By the time Angelus had destroyed everything in the house, including the mirror, the bed, and the bath, an hour had gone by. He stalked out to his car and headed off to find a bar where he could get stinking drunk, and maybe find someone even drunker than he would be himself to snack on.

Things had gone colossally wrong, but it hadn’t taken him long to realize that the biggest mistake had been for him to let Buffy out of his sight.

She was still his beauty, his precious, his mate. So what if she had a lousy soul, a stupid conscience, an aversion to eating humans and a penchant for snacking on his henchmen? The world was full of useless minions, but there was only one Buffy.

A Buffy who was frightened, disoriented, and had an hour’s head start. With luck, he’d run her to earth before she got too far away. Then he could apologize for hitting her and take her back to bed for another week to make it up to her.

Without luck, he’d have to figure out where she’d gone to and how to get her back.

Luck, as it turned out, had temporarily abandoned him. When he drove off, it was in the exact opposite direction Buffy had taken.

Buffy’s luck was, of course, phenomenal. She quickly caught up with the fleeing teenager and got him into the car before anything happened to him. Getting him up off his knees was the hardest part, and demanding that he not try to kneel at her feet while she was driving was just plain annoying. She finally gave up and allowed him to kiss her toes, once, before he would agree to settle down in the passenger seat, but only because she promised he could kiss her feet again when they got out.

Getting on the right road north to the border was no problem. Getting through the security check points, also no problem. Getting the guards to stand up again was damned near impossible, so she finally just drove off, hoping that once she was out of range they’d get back to normal. A glance in the rearview mirror at the limit of her (considerably enhanced) range of vision assured her that they had.

The teenaged boy, Micky, respectfully tried to point out that the gas gauge on the care was empty, but Buffy really wasn’t paying much attention to him. She was fiercely concentrating on her own problems. And, anyway, the car didn’t seem to mind driving without any gas, so why worry about that?

What worried her was her new status. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She very clearly remembered Angelus turning her. She very clearly remembered sliding gently into the velvet dark arms of death. She remembered floating blissfully in the dark for a while, and she remembered waking up.

She did not remember her soul floating off to the ether.

There was something very wrong there. She was certain her soul ought to have gone on vacation and that a demon should be in control of her body, right now. But, no demon. She was about dead certain--no pun intended-- of that. For one thing, her reflection had been staring back at her when she woke up, and she knew that vampiric demons had no reflection. Sure, she could feel the connection to all things evil that her vamped schoolmate, Holden, had told her about a few weeks ago. But, she didn’t feel particularly compelled by that evil, or attracted to it. She could also feel a connection to all things good in the world, to every living, growing thing, and if she thought about it, even to the unliving, natural things the world held. For instance, she could feel that there was a thin vein of gold in a rock formation a few hundred yards to their left, off of the roadway, but that it was too poor to be worth the effort of mining. She could feel that the healthy-looking young tree a mile up ahead was in fact infested with insects and would soon be dying. The split and withered oak some way into the forest was, however, likely to be still standing in another hundred years. And, if Micky didn’t give up his penchant for double-bacon cheeseburgers and cheese fries, he was going to die of a heart attack by the time he was fifty. She took her eyes off the road long enough to fix him with a stern glare.

"No more cheeseburgers or cheese fries. Got it?"

"Yes, oh exalted moon of beauty!" Micky babbled, not sure why he called her that, but ecstatic to have been blessed with a command to fulfil. The exalted moon of beauty smiled, a dazzle of pink lips and white teeth, and he swooned in delight. Cheeseburgers and fries were now firmly of the past for him.

Buffy drove until dawn. She discovered she didn’t particularly like sunlight, though she certainly didn’t react to it the way vampires did. Then again, she wasn’t a vampire, though she still had no idea what, exactly, she was. Grumbling, she got out of the driver’s seat and clambered into the back, where she had seen a thick woolen blanket, probably used by the minions who had formerly owned this car for the very purpose she was going to use it for. She ordered Micky to keep driving, then settled under the blanket to get some sleep.

Micky was only too happy to obey her slightest whim, but they’d been driving without gas for several hours now. Shouldn’t he look for a gas station? And, how was he supposed to start the car without a key? And, exactly where was he supposed to be driving, anyway?

Buffy told him not to bother her with details. They didn’t need gas or a key and he didn’t need directions because the car knew exactly where it was going and the quickest way to get there, so all Micky had to do was steer, okay? She pulled the blanket over her head and went to sleep. Micky shrugged his shoulders and hummed a jaunty tune as he pulled back out onto the highway.

It was dusk by the time they reached Sunnydale, and she was hungry again. Micky drove to Restfield Cemetery. She had to wait impatiently until he had rained enough kisses on her feet, toes and ankles to feel that he had accorded her the proper respect. Only then was she able to bid him to find his home and family, live a virtuous life, and not invite strangers into his home after dark. Rapturously agreeing to fulfil her slightest wish, Micky went on his way, leaving Buffy to take care of more important matters.

The fledglings were no problem. They crawled out of their graves, took one look at her, and continued crawling, offering up their necks with ecstatic eagerness. The older vamps were a bit of a mix. The dumber, minion types behaved pretty much like the fledglings, while a few of the smarter ones cowered in fear. Some of them attempted to run away, but only the ones who had been around for a few decades had the balls to fight her. Not that there was much of a fight, ever. She didn’t get her pretty velvet dress dirty, at all. Even dusted, vampires dared not cling to her without her permission.

Five dead vampires later, Buffy was feeling very full. She had binged, but knew intuitively that this was just a normal reaction to her new state, akin to the bloodthirst of a newly risen vampire. Her appetite would taper off. In a few weeks, she wouldn’t need to eat more than one vampire a night, and in a few months, she’d probably be able to go months at a time before she was forced to find a meal. She wasn’t sure how she knew this, but she did. She smiled, thinking of the other things she knew, then frowned, cocking her head at the faint sounds coming from the other side of the cemetery. Slowly, another smile replaced her frown. What a perfect opportunity to try out her new skills.

Willow had clung to hope longer than the others. Buffy had been gone a full week before she would even consider the idea that her friend might not have survived. She’d beaten down the panic that had followed the failure of her location spell. She hadn’t wigged when Wes’s receiver failed to pick up the signal from the monitor. The fact that the surveillance equipment wasn’t emitting a single beep, flashing a single light, or showing a single blip didn’t upset her. As days passed and Connor admitted he couldn’t pick up the trail, while Spike and Gunn repeatedly returned from their own excursions to report that there was nothing to report, Willow had told herself and everyone else who would listen, that it was okay. Buffy was fine. Angelus had just taken her outside of the city, someplace out of range of their spells and beyond the limits of their equipment. But, she was Buffy. She’d be fine. She’d died twice and come back and she’d saved the world a skillion times and she was not going to die now, she wasn’t!

That little outburst had ended in a sharp slap from Wes, before her hysteria got out of hand, and then she’d been reduced to crying for half an hour, while Xander held onto her and cried, just as hard. But, it had taken a whole week for her to get to that point. Sometime during her crying jag, she must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing she remembered was waking up in her bed, which used to be Buffy’s bed, and crying all over again.

They _so_ had to sell the house on Revello Drive.

She’d been subdued when she came down stairs that night, and anxious for something to do. The AI team, except for Wes, had gone back to LA that afternoon. Wes would be staying to help Giles with the remaining SIT’s. Willow had eagerly agreed to go out with the others on patrol that night. All of them needed something to take their minds off things. Faith and Spike each had one of the two remaining SIT’s with them, and one of the two surviving Watchers, as well. It was something of a training exercise for them. For Xander and Willow, it was more a way of feeling they were doing something useful so that they wouldn’t have to feel utterly helpless and impotent. Dawn felt helpless and impotent enough for all of them. She was curled up on a couch, too depressed to move. Anya was looking after her.

Given the obituary listings of who had been buried where for the past week, of Sunnydale’s twelve cemeteries, Restfield was expected to be the least active tonight. That was why Xander and Willow had been told to limit their patrol to that area and leave the more highly trafficked burial grounds to the more effective warriors. Xander and Willow had been happy to comply. No one realized that an older nest of vampires had set up shop the previous evening in one of the larger mausoleums Restfiled held, and thus it was that the least experienced warriors in the Scooby gang found themselves in a fight to the death with a dozen angry, hungry vampires.

Xander was doggedly wielding an ax, and he’d gotten in a few lucky blows, but Willow could tell that the remaining vamps were mainly toying with him, wanting to wear him down before they moved in for the kill. She’d managed to fire off one spell, which caused a fireball to take out two more vampires, but once alerted, the vampires managed to distract her from being able to complete another one, and she was reduced to using the long pole with which she’d armed herself, for defense. It wasn’t long before she and Xander had been driven into a smaller and smaller area, until they were fighting back to back as the ring of slavering vampires tightened around them.

A ribbon of darkness appeared at the edge of Willow’s vision, and tinkling laughter sounded on the breeze. The vampires froze, looking around them, and Xander took advantage, decapitating his nearest opponent. A moment later, sparkling blackness had circled the entire clan of vampires, and one by one they exploded into dust, almost too quickly for the eye to see.

The last vamp standing snarled in enraged fear and backed away from his intended victims. Shimmering darkness coalesced behind him and pulled him into her waiting arms.

He collapsed almost willingly into her embrace and offered up his neck. She bent her moonlit silver head over him, draining him deep.

Willow and Xander looked on in shock. But, no, it couldn’t be . . .

"Buffy?" Willow gasped. The fall of moonlight lifted, and eyes green as emeralds blazed toward them. Her mouth was stained and dripping red in her alabaster face.

Willow and Xander took one look at what appeared to be Buffy, the Vampire, and fled. Hurt, Buffy dropped her latest meal and collapsed onto the nearest tombstone, weeping softly.

The vampire crawled away unnoticed.

Eventually, Buffy dried her tears, and squared her shoulders. Angelus might have thrown her out, but she was damned if she’d let herself be exiled from her own home. She got up and briskly walked home.

Xander and Willow had already gotten there.

"She’s back," Willow babbled. "Only she’s not her any more and we should probably board up the windows, and nail some crosses over them, too. Oh, and, maybe we should lock the door to the basement and shove the couch up against it ‘cause I’m not sure she couldn’t get in through the window, there." She was in full babble mode and this time it was Anya who slapped her. It was left to Xander to explain what they’d seen.

"I don’t understand," Giles said. "She saved you from the other vampires?"

"Well, yeah, but probably because she wanted to eat us herself," Xander pointed out.

"That would fit," Spike sighed heavily. "Family blood is always the sweetest." Beside him, Dawn shivered. He reached a protective arm around her. "Don’t worry nibblet. Big Sis won’t harm you."

"You didn’t see Big Sis," Willow grumped. Spike growled at her.

"Pull yourself together, Red. You know what to do. Damn Orb is right there, and the spell is open on the coffee table. Give Buffy her soul back, and she won’t be a danger, anymore. Likely, she’ll lead us to Angelus and we can take care of him, too."

"Great. And then we’ll have three ensouled, brooding, moping vampires on our hands," Xander complained.

"Yes, well they’ll be three ensouled, brooding, moping vampires fighting on the side of good instead of championing evil, so that will work out, won’t it?" Wes said acidly as he went off to fetch the Orb."

"Wes is right," Giles said, retrieving the spell. "But we must act immediately. If Buffy moved as quickly as you said she did, Willow she could be--"

The door to the Summer’s household burst open, revealing a vision of moonlight and green fire.

"--right behind you," Faith finished Giles’ sentence for him.

"It’s okay," Kennedy, one of the SIT’s pointed out. "Vampires can’t come in without an invitation," she said, just before Buffy stepped inside and closed the door behind her.

Everyone’s attention was so focused on the front of the room, toward Buffy, that almost no one noticed what was going on in the back.

Spike had stood up. Smiling. And then, smiling more broadly than ever he’d fallen to his knees. Dawn glanced at him but was too busy staring at her sister to pay him much mind. Anya however, took one look at Buffy, sighed, and followed Spike’s example. Everyone else seemed rooted to the floor. Buffy looked at all of them, shifting on her feet, for all the world as if she were embarrassed.

"Um, hi?" she said tentatively.

"Oh, for pity’s sake!" Anya said in exasperation as no one moved. "Well, come on! Get on your knees. You know you all want to."

"I--we---well, yes," Giles realized. "Although why we want to . . ." he trailed off, unable to complete the sentence in his contemplation of the perfect beauty before him.

"Isn’t it obvious?" Anya snapped. "I mean look at her! She’s clearly not a vampire. And she’s not dead. Well, no, actually, if the legends are true, she is dead. It’s just that she’s not a dead human."

"Then what are you, B?" Faith said, fighting the instinctive urge to fall in supplication at the feet of the being who used to be her sister slayer, but probably wasn’t anymore. Faith wasn’t willing to do anything until she was certain that there was no danger.

"I’m Buffy," Buffy said plaintively. It was the only answer she had to give.

"Can’t you see?" Anya asked, truly mystified that no one else but Spike seemed to understand what was going on, not even Buffy herself. "She’s Buffy and she’s, well, she’s--"

"A goddess," Spike sighed in rapture.

The Scoobies exchanged glances, and one by one, fell to their knees.


	4. The Price of Eternity

"Which legends would those be?" Giles asked Anya an hour later. Buffy had claimed to be tired and had gone to sleep in her old room. There had been a bit of awkwardness when she’d tried to climb into bed and the cotton percale sheets had turned to ash as soon as they’d contacted her skin.

"Well, honestly," Anya had said. "What did you expect? A goddess sleeping on permanent press? Not likely. Now, where are the satin sheets we got Willow and Tara as an anniversary gift?"

Once the bedclothes had been changed and Buffy was resting comfortably, the gang had reconvened in the living room, and tried to figure things out. It was then that Giles, remembering Anya’s reference to "if the legends were true," asked her to explain.

"Do you mean to tell me that you honestly don’t know?" Anya asked in disbelief.

"If they knew, they wouldn’t be asking, pet," Spike pointed out calmly. "I guess even the Watchers forgot this one."

"Perhaps you’d give us a reminder?" Wes drawled, annoyed.

" _Selene Mori,"_ Spike said. "Moonlight of Death."

" _Nefer Noir_ ," Anya said. "Beautiful Dark."

"Sacred to the Moon, The Bride of the Devourer, The Concubine of Blood," Spike continued.

"The Concubine. . . .?" Giles said, as the title rang a bell. "The goddess who is supposed to sweep across the earth, purging it of the plague of vampires, purifying the world before the Great Apocalypse?"

"There’s going to be another Apocalypse?" Willow squeaked.

"Not immediately," Wes said reassuringly. "The duration of the cleansing process the Concubine undertakes has been calculated to last a minimum of one thousand years."

"Oh. Good. Wouldn’t want to be unprepared for that one," Willow said, trying to let the idea that her best friend was supposed to be around for another thousand years sink in. Somehow, the idea of not being there with Buffy when she faced another Apocalypse seemed, well, _wrong_.

"I still can’t believe it," Giles said. "That legend was declared nothing more than a wishful fairy tale by the Council more than five hundred years ago."

"That’s the sort of forward thinking that got those blokes blown up by the First," Spike pointed out. Giles smiled ruefully, but Wes required more convincing.

"Yes, well, but are you sure?" he asked.

"Well, let’s see," Anya began sarcastically. "Feeds from vampires. Check. Causes all who see her to fall to their knees in adulation. Check."

" _And her hair will be as moonlight and her eyes as the fire at the heart of the world_ ," Spike declaimed, from memory.

"Fire? So, wouldn’t that be red, like the magma in the earth’s core?" Dawn pointed out. "Buffy’s eyes aren’t red."

"Not the literal fire," Spike explained. "The symbolic fire: life, itself, burning at the heart of the world. That’s why her eyes are green, pet. It’s one of the colors associated with life and growth and change."

"Oh," Dawn said, taking that in. "So that would be another check, huh?"

"Yep."

"Okay. So. My sister’s a goddess," Dawn said with a smile. "How cool is that?"

Pretty cool, they decided, but not without problems as they learned over the next few days.

Buffy wouldn’t go out of the house during the daylight hours. She could do so, but it made her very uncomfortable. Dawn could no longer make excuses for her at work, and Buffy phoned in her resignation to Mr. Wood, citing vague family obligations as the reason. Since the insurance policy was now moot, Buffy needed another source of income.

"Especially with the way we’ve had to recover all of the furniture in the house in silk and velvet," Anya complained. "Not to mention replacing her entire wardrobe with silk, satin, velvet and leather. I mean, do you know how much 100% silk stockings cost? There are only two or three manufacturers that even make them, these days." The expense involved in redecorating the house and buying new clothes for Buffy was unavoidable. Anything else that came in contact with the former Slayer’s divine skin tended to turn to ash very quickly. It was a bit disconcerting.

Even more disconcerting was Buffy’s behavior.

She hadn’t said much since her return. Her eyes often had a distant look, as if she were contemplating vistas only she could perceive. She avoided people, which was just as well since it would be hard to explain to the casual observer just why everyone in the vicinity was kneeling in worship. But, she did not remain completely secluded. Buffy left at dusk each night to patrol, and never returned until the sun was peeking over the horizon the following morning. One night, Faith finished with her own patrol, and sought out Buffy, not to join her, but to watch her from the shadows, wondering why the other Slayer--former Slayer--didn’t just take care of business and come home.

Then Faith realized that was exactly what Buffy was doing. Only, the home she returned to wasn’t the one on Revello Drive.

It made Faith a little uncomfortable to watch Buffy feed. Buffy simply picked a spot to stand, closed her eyes, and stood still. Her skin and hair gradually brightened until she seemed to glow in the darkness. Then, every vamp in a one-mile radius began to come forward, drawn to her like moths to a flame. Some of them offered their necks, some cowered in fear. A few tried to run. The outcome was always the same: those particularly favored would be permitted to serve as nourishment. The others were simply dusted.

She didn’t even use a stake. She simply placed her hand over the spot where their hearts no longer beat, stared into their eyes, and they dissolved beneath her touch. It was an unnerving sight.

Unnerving, but wicked cool, especially when the rare vamp got up the gumption to actually fight back, rather than submit. That was quite a show. Buffy’s moves had always been smooth, her fighting style controlled and sleek, more like a dance than deadly combat. But now she was liquid grace, fluid motion, and the dance had become an exquisitely choreographed ballet. By the time Buffy polished off the vampires foolish enough to oppose her, Faith was hard pressed not to go crawling to her and offer her own neck.

But, Buffy didn’t drink human blood. Which was probably a good thing for the continued existence of the human race, since her ability to attract her prey far outstripped what the most predatious vampire could claim. Although, come to think of it, there was one vampire . . .

Buffy was moving again, and Faith shook off the thought as she followed to the next cemetery.

As she watched the same show repeated--Buffy glowing, vampires willingly flocking to her, with only a few of the more clever ones cognizant of the danger, and showing proper fear, while fewer yet were aware enough to put up a fight--Faith suddenly realized what was so unnerving about the sight.

Buffy was behaving like the ultimate vampire, and the vampires themselves were behaving like human prey.

For ten thousand years, maybe longer, vampires had moved among the human population. Sometimes they fed by force, but more often they preferred the easier route of enthralling their victims. The seductive power of the dead was legend, and legendarily irresistible. Humans rarely understood what they were really facing until it was too late, and then, they almost always could do nothing more than cower in fear and await the inevitable. Other than the Slayers born to destroy them, and the occasional Watcher who had gotten beyond the Council’s training and really understood what it was to battle darkness, the humans who could stand up to a vampire and give them a decent fight were few and far between. The humans who could walk away from such a fight were almost non-existent, and Faith was willing to bet that she and Buffy were on a first name basis with almost all of them.

So successful was Buffy in her predations on the vampire population, that she had finished her sweep of the cemeteries long before midnight, and soon headed out. Now they were getting somewhere, Faith thought. Now she would find out what was keeping Buffy away from her friends and family for most of the night.

But when she finally saw where Buffy was heading, she realized that she should have known, all along.

"It makes sense," Willow sighed after Faith told them what she’d discovered. "I mean, hello, ‘Concubine of Blood.’ Not exactly the title of a virgin goddess, is it?"

Spike snorted.

"I don’t know why you’re all so surprised," Anya said. "You all knew who took her. You didn’t think she turned herself into a goddess, did you?"

"Are you trying to say that Angelus turned Buffy, and that this was the result?" Giles asked.

"Well, duh," Anya said. "How did you think it happened?"

"Actually, I didn’t know," Giles admitted. "But, are you sure? It isn’t exactly the usual way things go."

"No, things don’t go that way when you turn a human, but our girl was never exactly human, was she?" Spike said. "She’s a Slayer, one of the best, and Slayers--"

"--are perfectly human," Giles insisted. "Merely endowed with preternatural powers."

"That isn’t exactly what they’re endowed with," Anya said. "Although the result is the same."

"What do you mean?" Wes asked.

"Well, I was only a demon for 1,100 years, but I met plenty who were older when I lived in Arash Ma’har. Some of them still have connections to the Elders, demons who were around before humans came to this world."

"Before the first vampire was made," Giles realized. "Before the first Slayer was called."

"Exactly," Anya said. "And what I was told was that the first Slayer wasn’t so much Called, as Calling. That is, she saw the first vampire made, saw it kill. And then she invoked one of the ancient goddesses--Kubaba? Semele? Inanna?--and begged to become a vessel for the goddess’ power, begged to become a guardian of those who worshipped the goddess, her mortal children . . ."

"And her prayer was granted," Giles said, awed.

"Ya think?" Willow mumbled.

"And you believe that it is her possession of this divine power that prevents a Slayer from being turned?" Wes said doubtfully. "How is it that we’ve never known this before?"

"Just how many Slayers have ever been turned before?" Spike said, already knowing the answer.

"None, really," Giles answered. "Not as far back as the Council has--had--records."

"With good reason," Spike nodded. "No vampire in his right mind would ever attempt to turn a Slayer. Even Lothos, who made a specialty of stalking them knew better than to tempt fate like that. Get a Slayer at your mercy and you’d have to have a real death wish to do anything but go for the kill. If it weren’t for what they were to each other when he had his soul, Angelus wouldn’t have tried this. But once he got a taste of Buffy, developed his twisted craving. . .Well, I guess we know which Devourer’s Bride she became."

"So you think she dusted him?" Dawn said, worriedly. "’Cause that would explain why she’s been moping so much."

"Not likely," Spike shook his head. "If Angelus were truly gone, the last place she’d go anywhere near would be the mansion on Crawford Street. Too many memories, too much pain. She may be a goddess, but she’s still our Buffy. So, if that’s where she’s been spending her nights, and if she’s gone to the trouble of putting some of her new silk sheets on the bed that’s still there, and she’s sleeping there until dawn, I’d say she isn’t moping."

"What do you think she’s doing?" Xander asked. Spike looked him in the eye, and gave him the answer that they all half-expected.

"Waiting."

Rumors spread even more quickly in the vampire underworld than they did in the human one. So the whispers raced along the undead grapevine with preternatural speed, and within twenty-four hours of her first kill in Sunnydale, every vampire on the planet knew that the Moonlight of Death had risen, and that the Beautiful Dark was upon them. It inspired something of a religious conversion, especially when stories such as that of Jimmy Scar were told and retold. Jimmy had seen her with his own eyes, had watched her decimate his entire clan, had made an attempt to fight her and had found himself locked in her cool embrace.

And, then, he said, his eyes filling with tears, according to those who had heard the tale from his own lips, then had come rapture. Skin like satin holding him close to soft, perfumed flesh. Lips soft as velvet opening above his throat and opalescent fangs sliding into his neck smooth as silk. She hadn’t fed from him with the rapacious ferocity of the common predator but with the delicate, seductive rhythm of the connoisseur. And in the few precious seconds he’d been held fast in her arms, he’d wanted nothing more than to let her finish what she’d started. He was lucky to get away, he would claim, but his voice was unconvincing, and his eyes never met anyone else’s when he added that statement to the end of his story. Except that it wasn’t the end. Because two days after he showed up in Tijuana, telling that story over and over to any vamp who’d listen, he disappeared again. And it was left to another vamp, one who had known him in the bad old days of the Civil War--the one in England-- during their mortal lifetimes to finish the tale: he’d given in to Jimmy Scar’s pleadings and driven him back to Sunnydale, then watched as he’d crawled, rather than walked, to the feet of the _Nefer Noir_ and surrendered himself utterly to ecstatic darkness.

Angelus crushed the shot glass he was holding in his hand when he heard that story. Then he’d dumped the vampire trull he’d been halfheartedly fondling off of his lap, shook the crushed glass out of his bleeding palm, and stormed back out to the black sports car he’d left in the parking lot, and took off.

Fucking unfaithful bitch, he thought as he took off for the place he should have known she’d go back to. Goddess or not, it was time to remind Buffy Summers just who she belonged to.

Buffy was less and less responsive, focused more and more on her internal visions, barely aware of those around her. Still, she seemed to be paying some attention. Anya sat reviewing household bills early one morning, complaining about the lack of cash flow as Buffy returned home, and passed by on her way back to her bedroom. Buffy frowned, paused, and returned to Anya. She held out her hand, obviously holding something, and cautiously, Anya opened her own, wondering what Buffy was going to give her. Buffy dropped a few stones into Anya’s open palm, then turned back around and headed up the stairs without having said a single word. Puzzled, Anya took a closer look at the rough stones.

Her whoops of avaricious glee woke the household, who came downstairs to find that she’d already logged on to Ebay, because you couldn’t just bring mystic emeralds of that quality into a jeweler’s and expect to get anything remotely approaching their fair Black Market value.

Once they incorporated to protect their assets, paid off the mortgage on the Summer’s family home, established a trust fund for Dawn, and paid Anya the salary she should be getting for handling financial matters, they might as well go ahead and buy the Crawford Street mansion, Anya commented. The sooner they began the extensive renovations it needed, the happier Buffy would probably be.

Luckily, the only thing the master bedroom really needed was a good cleaning, a fresh mattress, and some new silk sheets. Anya had that taken care of by the end of the day. She also had the plumbing in the adjacent bathroom inspected and the minor repairs it needed made, after which she got a cleaning crew in to take care of the most obvious problems. It was a good thing, she pointed out to the somewhat dazed Scoobies, that Buffy was on a liquid diet. They could put the kitchen remodeling on hold indefinitely.

"Because we don’t even know if we’ll want to move in with Buffy, once Angelus returns," she pointed out pragmatically.

"And you think Angelus will want to come back to the goddess destined to rid the earth of his kind, why?" Xander asked. Anya, Willow, Faith and Dawn simply exchanged a look and kept on making plans.

They told Buffy about them before she left on patrol, so that she wouldn’t feel obligated to come back to Revello Drive if she didn’t want to.

"Not that we don’t want you back, because we do," Dawn insisted. "But, we just want you to be happy, and we know you’re spending time there, so we thought we’d just make it more, well, comfortable for you."

Buffy listened politely, but her expression was once again distant, and Dawn couldn’t really be sure she’d heard what Dawn was trying to say. Sighing, the girl opened the door and let her older sister disappear into the night.

Buffy ate with voracious appetite. It was time. She devoured every supplicant, drained every cowering wretch, and drank down the few who dared resist. By the time she’d finished her patrol, her skin was suffused with a nearly human tinge of rose, and she shone like a polished diamond beneath the moon.

She was pleased with the repairs to the plumbing, drawing herself a hot bath, and using the oiled bath beads Anya had thoughtfully arranged to be supplied. Her favorite vanilla scent soon pervaded the air, and Buffy slipped out of her clothes and sank gratefully into the heated waters. After a refreshing soak, she wrapped herself in a luxurious bath sheet, dried and styled her hair with a wave of her hand, and drifted back to the bedroom where, as she had done every night, she slid naked between silk sheets.

Tonight would be different, she promised herself, as she always did. Then she closed her eyes to dream.

As midnight struck, Angelus stared down at the girl sleeping in his bed, radiant beneath the moon. He stalked quietly over to the bed, and deftly slid the covers away. His eyes narrowed when he saw that the enchanted golden bands he’d placed on her still adorned her limbs, though he knew they would be useless now. Slowly he undressed, determined to put an end this Goddess of the Night crap and teach his lover her place: beneath him, and only him, her crimson kisses and deadly bite his alone to enjoy.

For the first three or four hours it went exactly as he’d planned.

Buffy wasn’t awake when he slid into the bed beside her, nor did she wake when he gently spread her thighs and treated himself to the much-missed taste of her. He was very careful, by dint of using the most delicate touches and gentle caresses, not to break her slumberous state, even as he brought her to the apex of delight. Before she’d quite scaled the peak, he eased her back down, delighting in her mewls of loss and protest.

When he slid over her, and entered her she was breathtakingly wet, excruciatingly hot and enthrallingly tight. And when she opened her glorious green eyes to see him braced above her, she was rapturously welcoming, as well.

Slow, because he had a point to prove, and he really didn’t want to have to pick himself up from the wreckage of a shattered bed while making it. Hard, because she had a lesson to learn. And forever, because there was no other point worth making in the world.

She got her revenge every time she climaxed, squeezing him so tight, there was no question of holding off his own orgasm, and she milked him of every drop of cold, dead seed his body held.

It was a good thing there were no other dwellings for blocks around the mansion, because her shrieks of completion and his roars of satisfaction were so loud and so frequent, even the dead couldn’t have slept through them. He was never really clear how they’d gotten from the middle of the spacious bed halfway across the thick carpet to end up before the fireplace, but as he watched the firelight glowing on the alabaster purity of her sweat-slicked skin, he decided he didn’t really give a fuck.

Buffy was on all fours before him, and she glanced over her shoulder, lips parted in a seductive smile as her green eyes flashed him a come-hither glance and she wriggled the most luscious ass on the mortal plane in his face. Angelus didn’t have to be asked twice. He kissed his way from her bottom up her spine to her soft shoulders and long, graceful neck, blanketing her body and settling himself between her eagerly parted thighs.

"Whose are you, Buffy Summers?" he demanded of her, his eternally hard cock teasing at her entrance.

"Only yours," she moaned back, rubbing her wet slit against him in a silent plea for fulfillment, as if she hadn’t already enjoyed dozens of climaxes, the most recent no more than two minutes before. Then again, he was as hard for her as if he hadn’t buried himself inside of her for a month, let alone been sheathed inside her tight heat non-stop for the past four hours, so he understood her hunger.

It was just something between them, something so perfect, so right, so strong, that the hosts of hell and the armies of heaven and the machinations of The Powers That Be couldn’t intervene, couldn’t keep them apart. For now, Angelus was content to just go with the flow, and he slid inside her silken warmth once more.

He reached under her to fill his hands with her perfect, plump breasts, tormenting her nipples. She keened her delight, hips grinding back forcefully against his own. The rhythm he set now was hard and pounding, but he knew she could take it.

She had been born to take it from him.

He shifted his hips, angling himself to go deeply inside her, as deep as possible, ravishing her, rampant against the most secret, delicate, sensitive nerves her body possessed. She was sobbing, now, pleasure evident, her orgasm once more building to explosive power.

And it was now that she did what they had both avoided all night long, too wrapped up in the heat of their reunion to consider other hungers.

Buffy flung her moonlight silver hair away from her neck, pressing the white column of her throat against her lover’s mouth.

"Bite me!" she whimpered, on the cusp of sweet release.

Roaring, Angelus vamped out and bit down, sending both of them skyrocketing into the most delirious pleasure of their entire unlives.

He’d thought he’d never tasted anything in the world better than her Slayer’s blood when he’d drained her dry to turn her, and that he never would again. He found now that he was wrong. This was the very nectar of the gods, after which even virgin human would only taste as dross to him. Thank all the lords of hell she was as immortal as he was, and the rich red fountain beneath his lips would never run dry.

He was still thinking that when she drained away the last of his seed, then collapsed, spent, beneath him, and he followed her down to the softness of the rug. Too drained to move, he lay there uncomplaining as she gently wriggled out from under him and rolled him over onto his back. He was even smiling as she pulled him into her arms and held him close, pressing soft kisses to his jaw and along his neck. He continued to think it as she slid her fangs into his jugular and began to steal back from him every drop that he’d stolen from her.

It was only when he found that he had no strength to move that Angelus realized he ought to be alarmed, but he knew his Buffy would never deliver to him the death she so ruthless dealt to his brethren. His confidence in that remained, even as she pulled the last drops from his withering flesh, and he slid into the voracious arms of the _Nefer Noir_.

"My Angelus, mine," she whispered into his ear.

"Always . . ." he managed through parched lips before the _Selene Mori_ claimed him utterly.

Buffy held her lover close. She’d taken the precaution of feeding him her own blood first, because this wouldn’t work any other way. If she’d tried to drain him this thoroughly without having inoculated him beforehand, he would have been dust long before she had gotten to this point. As it was, if he could see himself, he would be horrified. The man in her arms looked every one of his 250 plus years. His skin was withered and wrinkled over muscles shrunken and desiccate from blood-hunger. His glossy black hair had been leached of color and hung in wispy white shreds to his balding scalp. His grayish lips had pulled back from yellowed canines, the fangs almost brittle and fragile against his shrunken gums.

Even vampires who had been starved of blood for years rarely got to this state. Angelus looked like a human at the farthest reaches of a frail and unhealthy old age.

Any woman in her right mind would have been horrified and repelled by this vision. Buffy held him closer, murmured soothingly in his ears, and wept crystal tears for the old age they would never reach. Then, with a sigh, she slashed her fangs across her own wrist and held it to her lover’s mouth, infecting him with her blood, as he had once infected her, knowing it would ultimately restore every bit of youth and beauty her drinking had reft away.

In a few days, Buffy would go back to her friends, and they would find her more lucid, more present, than she had been since her return. Of course, she would continue to live in the mansion rather than Revello Drive, but there was plenty of room for the others on Crawford Street if they wanted to come. The distant visions that had held her attention had all been assimilated. Some had come to pass, some were for a distant future, none of them were important, right now.

The only thing of any importance in Buffy’s world at the moment lay dead and unmoving on the hearth rug before a roaring fire. Sighing, Buffy effortlessly picked him up and tucked him back in their bed.

The following midnight, Buffy’s demon lover opened his eyes on a world that was shockingly different from the one he’d left.

"What’s going on?" he asked shakily, sitting up.

"You know," Buffy said. "You’re the one who told me, after all."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, I can hardly be the Bride of the Devourer if there’s no Devourer, can I?"

"Bride of the . . .?"

"I tried to tell you: they’re not our kind. They never were. You were always a lion amongst jackals when you were a vampire."

"I’m still a vampire," he growled, fangs flashing to prove the point.

"Yes, but you’re so much more than that now." she explained, walking toward him in an enticement of full hips, pert breasts, silken thighs. "You’ve come to it at last, my darling, and you will reign at my side, ruling the night as my king, my consort, my precious fuck toy."

"Buffy," he growled warningly.

"Don’t worry, darling, you’re still the dom," she assured him, sliding against him like velvet heat. Somewhat mollified, he pulled her closer, nipping at her berry-ripe lips.

"Now that you’ve risen, the demon world will burn," she said exultantly, "and you will dance in the flames."

He stopped kissing her, regarding her with a look of dawning horror as he understood what had happened, what was about to happen, what his treacherous, gorgeous, wonderful little bitch had done.

"Feeding on vampires is what you were meant for," Buffy said, confirming his worst fears. "Well, at least since you fed from me, it is. After all, darling, it’s exactly what you told me it was." She leaned forward and licked at his ear, then whispered to him in her most seductive, enthralling tones.

"It’s in the blood. . ."

 

**The End**


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we find out what happens to everyone else and the third wall suffers some breaks.

I leave it to the discerning reader to decide which of the following happened:

Angel ending: Angelus is pissed because he can feel his soul returning. Angel gets to live as the Destroyer with Buffy as his Bride and Angelus is forced to take a back seat, forever.

Angelus ending: Angelus is pissed because he’s now going to be a power for Good. He sulks for the rest of the night until Buffy wins him around with the most mind-blowing sex of his unlife, while Angel’s soul is left to drift contentedly in the ether.

Margot ending: Angelus is pissed because he can feel his body shaking and the soul’s approach. He howls in pain as his body divides itself. A moment later, he stares resentfully at his twin, Angel, whom Buffy is happily welcoming back home. However, she includes Angelus in the celebrations, and he is soon reconciled to the new situation. Apparently, someone mistranslated the ancient prophecies and Buffy is The Bride of the Devourers, plural. Because two Angels/Angeluses are better than one.

As to the rest of our cast of characters. . .

When Faith was stabbed through the stomach battling a demon and died just before the paramedics arrived, Dawn turned out to be the next Slayer, royally pissing off the remaining SITs. The paramedics, however, were able to revive Faith, so Dawn didn’t get to be the primary Slayer, which royally pissed _her_ off.

Dawn grew up to marry Spike, who had had a crush on her for years.

Wes ended up with Faith, which people found even more shocking than Dawn marrying Spike.

Fred and Gunn broke up, and Gunn hooked up with Anne, who was still running the shelter for runaways.

With AI investigations closed, Connor and Cordy took their baby to another dimension where it could be raised in safety--a move Fred didn’t understand because with the Devourer(s) and the Concubine on hand, things were safer than they’d ever been right here on Earth. However, no one wanted to argue with a pissed off, part-demon, former Higher Being, especially one undergoing the hormonal mood swings of pregnancy. Fred just wished them lots of luck and waved good-bye.

Finding herself with nothing to do, Fred went back to graduate school, got her doctorate, and married a rock star she met while he was on campus making a video for his new version of Sting’s _Don’t Stand So Close To Me_. Go figure.

Xander reunited with Anya and they lived happily ever after.

So did Giles, who finally convinced Olivia to come back to him.

Willow set up house with Kennedy, and they lived happily ever after, too. Then Oz came back to make it a threesome, and they lived _really_ happily ever after.

The other surviving SITs continued training and helped Faith and Dawn on their patrols. One time, while fighting a demon, Rona met a really hunky warrior from another dimension and fell for him harder than a ton of bricks. They went back to Pylea where Groo made another, much more successful, attempt to bring order to his chaotic world.

Lorne turned the Hyperion into a nightclub that became the hottest spot in LA. Everyone, including the three starlets he married, assumed his horns, red eyes, and green skin were just a publicity stunt, like Kiss. All of his albums went platinum and he got a star on the walk of fame. Years after his entirely timely death at the age of 112, he continued to be more popular than Liberace, and Elvis, combined.

Cordy and Connor realized they really were wildly in love and they lived happily ever after, too. No, really! That’s what happened. Would I lie to you about that?

Dru, who wasn’t even in this story, finally found a nice Chaos demon to settle down with, and unlived happily ever after. At least until Angel/Angelus and Buffy ran into her one night and decided they felt a bit peckish.

When Lindsey, who also wasn’t in this story, but I’m on a roll so what the heck--Anyway, when Lindsey handled Lorne’s amicable divorce from the first starlet, he fell for her harder than Lorne had. He turned the case over to his partner to avoid conflict of interest and married her. Lorne sang at their wedding. They lived . . .oh, you get the drill.

Sam and Riley had a horrible divorce after which Riley slit his wrists. His dying action was to write Buffy a love letter in his own blood.

Well, actually that never happened. Sam and Riley were just fine. Because I really did like Riley, just not with Buffy. But I thought everyone who hated Buffy running after that helicopter in _Into the Woods_ as much as I did would appreciate it if that’s how things _had_ happened.

I realized when I reposted this that I left Wes out.  Bad me.  I forgot that he met Lilah at Lindsey's wedding, helped her (and Lindsey) figure out a way to break those pesky eternal contracts with the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart, so that they could all live Happily Ever After. We now return to what I originally wrote.

The one thing that bothered everyone was that Buffy and either Angel, Angelus or Angel _and_ Angelus would have to face the Great Apocalypse without them. Fortunately, Fred had solved the complexities of time travel as part of her doctoral thesis, so everyone just hopped into the time machine and showed up in the next millennium to help the Destroyer(s) and his/their Bride kick the shit out of The Powers That Be. What? You didn’t know that they were the smarmy bastards behind all the evil Wolfram & Hart was up to? Haven’t you been watching _Angel_ this season? Do you have a better explanation for what’s been going on?

Anyway, the Great Apocalypse was averted, after which Spike, the only remaining vampire with a soul--pay attention: Buffy and Angel/Angelus are gods with a small g now, not vampires--Shan-Shued. He and Dawn had a dozen kids.

As to Buffy and her Demon lover(s), whichever demon(s) he/they proved to be, they lived, as do all true and faithful lovers, for as long as the world endured, and until the last star fell from the sky. Afterward, their souls (or demonic spirits, if you prefer) blended together into a cloud of perpetual bliss that remained even when everything else in the universe ceased to be.

Because _Forever_ really was the whole point, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Original end note: See? I said it was fluffy.
> 
> Current addition to end note: Of course, my definition of "fluffy" may not be quite the same as everyone else's.


End file.
